‘Run, Hide, Fight’ Is Not How Our Brains Work

By Joseph Ledoux

Dec. 18, 2015

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CreditCreditGérard Dubois

IN this age of terror, we struggle to figure out how to protect ourselves — especially, of late, from active shooters.

One suggestion, promoted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security, and now widely disseminated, is “run, hide, fight.” The idea is: Run if you can; hide if you can’t run; and fight if all else fails. This three-step program appeals to common sense, but whether it makes scientific sense is another question.

Underlying the idea of “run, hide, fight” is the presumption that volitional choices are readily available in situations of danger. But the fact is, when you are in danger, whether it is a bicyclist speeding at you or a shooter locked and loaded, you may well find yourself frozen, unable to act and think clearly.

Freezing is not a choice. It is a built-in impulse controlled by ancient circuits in the brain involving the amygdala and its neural partners, and is automatically set into motion by external threats. By contrast, the kinds of intentional actions implied by “run, hide, fight” require newer circuits in the neocortex.

Contemporary science has refined the old “fight or flight” concept — the idea that those are the two hard-wired options when in mortal danger — to the updated “freeze, flee, fight.” While “freeze, flee, fight” is superficially similar to “run, hide, fight,” the two expressions make fundamentally different assumptions about how and why we do what we do, when in danger.

Why do we freeze? It’s part of a predatory defense system that is wired to keep the organism alive. Not only do we do it, but so do other mammals and other vertebrates. Even invertebrates — like flies — freeze. If you are freezing, you are less likely to be detected if the predator is far away, and if the predator is close by, you can postpone the attack (movement by the prey is a trigger for attack).

The freezing reaction is accompanied by a hormonal surge that helps mobilize your energy and focus your attention. While the hormonal and other physiological responses that accompany freezing are there for good reason, in highly stressful situations the secretions can be excessive and create impediments to making informed choices.

A vivid example of freezing was captured in a video of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. After the bomb went off, many people froze. Then, some began to try to escape (run), while others were slower on the uptake.

This variation in response is typical. Sometimes freezing is brief and sometimes it persists. This can reflect the particular situation you are in, but also your individual predisposition. Some people naturally have the ability to think through a stressful situation, or to even be motivated by it, and will more readily run, hide or fight as required. But for others, additional help is needed.

In my lab at New York University, we have created a version of this predicament using rats. The animals have been trained, through trial and error, to “know” how to escape in a certain dangerous situation. But when they are actually placed in the dangerous situation, some rats simply cannot execute the response — they stay frozen. If, however, we artificially shut down a key subregion of the amygdala in these rats, they are able to overcome the built-in impulse to freeze and use their “knowledge” about what to do.

We can learn a great deal about the basic mechanisms of how the brain detects and responds to threats through studies of rats. But people are not rats. We have additional cognitive resources, such as the ability to conceptualize our situation and re-evaluate it.

Studies by the psychologists James Gross at Stanford, Kevin Ochsner at Columbia and Elizabeth Phelps and me at New York University have shown that if people cognitively reappraise a situation, it can dampen their amygdala activity. This dampening may open the way for conceptually based actions, like “run, hide, fight,” to replace freezing and other hard-wired impulses.

How to encourage this kind of cognitive reappraisal? Perhaps we could harness the power of social media to conduct a kind of collective cultural training in which we learn to reappraise the freezing that occurs in dangerous situations. In most of us, freezing will occur no matter what. It’s just a matter of how long it will last.

If we could come to use the fact that we are freezing to trigger a reappraisal in a moment of danger, we might just be able to dampen the amygdala enough to accelerate our ability to shift into the action mode required for “run, hide, fight.” Even if this cut only a few seconds off our freezing, it might be the difference between life and death.

Joseph LeDoux, a professor of science at New York University, directs the Emotional Brain Institute. He is the author of “Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Run, Hide, Fight’ Is Not How Our Brains Work. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe